Those Elizabeth Holmes Billboards That Are Popping Up All Over Town? Meet the Mystery Man Behind Them

Why Is Elizabeth Holmes Suddenly All Over L.A.?

If you’ve found yourself stuck in traffic on Sunset lately, or crawling down Crenshaw Boulevard, or inching through West Hollywood, you’ve undoubtedly noticed them. Stark white billboards with blood-red lettering, a cryptic slogan and big, declarative claims like: “ELIZABETH HOLMES INNOCENT.”

No branding. No website (at least not on the ones Rambling has seen). Just a blown-up profile of the currently incarcerated biotech scamstress, sometimes with a bearded mystery man, sometimes not.

Let Rambling explain. It’s all part of a very strange and very L.A. viral campaign for something called Just Blood, a would-be documentary project (maybe) from a filmmaker (sort of) who is trying to reframe the disgraced Theranos founder as a misunderstood hero whose miracle blood machine actually worked.

The brains behind the campaign is Ryan “Egypt” Elhosseiny, a Miami-based entrepreneur and provocateur with a flair for attention-grabbing stunts and a rabbit hole of a résumé that includes stints as a nightclub impresario, a social impact strategist, a filmmaker, a creative director and a rapper. And, oh, yeah, a “blood testing expert.”

Holmes, of course, was convicted in 2022 of fraud related to her bogus blood-testing technology. She’s currently serving 11 years in a federal prison in Texas. But Elhosseiny insists that he has replicated Holmes’ work and says he’s relaunched Holmes’ company — claims that should probably be taken with a truckload of skepticism considering the locale where, earlier this year, he unveiled his staggering breakthrough: Miami’s LIV nightclub.

Of course, Los Angeles has a long history of bonkers billboards — remember the baffling Tommy Wiseau placard that loomed over Highland and Franklin for five years back in the 2000s? — but this is a strangely strategic campaign, with billboards planted in particularly high-visibility, high-traffic zones like the Mid-City corridor at Crenshaw and Washington. Whatever other talents he might possess — and he didn’t respond to Rambling’s request for an interview — Elhosseiny obviously has mad skills as a Los Angeles traffic engineer.

Alinea Pop-Up in Beverly Hills — Enjoy the Blade Runner Amuse-Bouche

What do The Truman Show, Blade Runner, The Witch and The Menu have in common? In Beverly Hills this summer, they’re all dinner.

To mark its 20th anniversary, Chicago’s three-Michelin-starred Alinea has taken over The Maybourne Beverly Hills with an eight-course tasting menu staged across eight movie-themed rooms. Guests sip cocktails in a neon-lit Blade Runner bar (with a deconstructed Chicago-style hot dog amuse-bouche), watch stone-faced chefs move like NPCs in a Truman Show-style kitchen, get a side of existential dread with The Witch and finish in a dessert room inspired by The Menu, where marshmallow is smeared directly onto the table in tribute to the film’s fiery finale.

At $695 a head (excluding alcohol), it’s less dinner than performance art. Or, as Alinea CEO Jason Weingarten puts it: “You’re getting into the chef’s brain.” Yum!

The pop-up runs through Aug. 16.

Hermione and Draco and … Jane Austen? Potter Fanfic Hits the Best-Seller List

If you’ve recently glanced at The New York Times best-seller list and detected a faint whiff of wand polish and teen angst, here’s why: two of the buzziest books right now — Rose in Chains, by Julie Soto, and The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, by Brigitte Knightley — began life as Harry Potter fan fiction. More specifically, Dramione fan fiction.

“Dramione,” for the uninitiated, is a genre where Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger stop trading hexes and start falling in love — a pairing that never happens in the books but has thrived in the fanfic trenches of Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.net.

The authors, formerly known online as LovesBitca8 (Soto) and Isthisselfcare (Knightley), have since rebranded their stories for print — swapping out Hogwarts, Voldemort and other J.K. Rowling-specific elements to avoid trademark issues. In Soto’s case, that means her leads are now Briony Rosewood and Toven Hearst.

“It’s incredibly hard to build from scratch, stripping out the influences that shaped it,” Soto says of reworking her fanfic for print. But at its heart, she says, the story was always rooted in Pride and Prejudice: “Two people intrinsically different and do not understand each other but perhaps feel connected.”

Fanfic-to-best-seller leaps aren’t new. Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfic. After, the 2019 movie, started as Harry Styles fanfic. And Wicked? Basically The Wizard of Oz fanfic with Broadway lighting. — ANDY LEWIS

Pelosi Gets on the Bus at Golden Gate Park

Nancy Pelosi has been called many things — master strategist, liberal icon, radical leftist. But a Deadhead? That’s a new one.

And yet, there she was in her home district on Aug. 2, holding court in a “Friends and Family” section at the second of three Dead & Company’s shows at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, swaying with 60,000 other fans celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s formation mere blocks away.

Also spotted in the crowd: Miles Teller, Andy Cohen and designer James Perse — though none drew as many double takes as the former speaker of the House, who was clearly leaning into the vibe. In fact, lately, she’s practically been traveling with the band.

“This was our fourth event with them in eight months,” Pelosi tells THR. “I attended the Kennedy Center Honors with them, next we went to the sensational MusiCares event honoring them, then their concert at the Sphere and now Golden Gate. They just keep getting better and better.”

It’s unknown whether Pelosi splurged for the top-tier “Golden Road” experience — golf cart shuttles around the park, heated viewing areas decked out with carpeting and velvet sofas, a top-shelf open bar. Or if she made a long, strange trip to the “Grass Lands” section, where flower, edibles and spiked drinks were offered by local cannabis dispensaries.

Wherever she wandered, she obviously enjoyed herself. “It was a fabulous performance,” she says. “They played all my favorite songs and I danced the whole time. You can never dance too much.”

This story appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.